Yavin 4, Tuesday Morning Fandom Time
Apr. 16th, 2013 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelikemesinceAnakin had left Jaina's apartment, stopped back at the dorms exactly long enough to retrieve his lightsaber from the weapons locker, then taken his X-Wing home via a sequence of hyperspace routes so recklessly calculated that even Fiver seemed scandalized.
On the way, he'd put in a call to Jacen and Jaina, hoping to get a sense of what kind of atmosphere he'd be heading into, and that hadn't gone well. For one, the conversation (as most of the ones he had with his brother did) devolved into a shouting match that only ended because Jaina yelled at both of them. Beyond that, he was exactly the opposite of gratified to find out that his initial guess had been more or less on target: the Peace Brigade definitely seemed to have its sights set on the Jedi academy, since the prospect of rounding up a whole lot of Jedi with minimal effort to turn them over to the Yuuzhan Vong was an appealing one.
So they'd pulled Uncle Luke into the call, only to find out that while he suspected the same thing they did and had requested backup from the New Republic, the military wasn't in a hurry to send it and despite his own concerns and the fact that he'd been trying to make arrangements with Talon Karrde to arrange for an evacuation, Luke himself didn't feel it was urgent enough to warrant immediate action.
Well, considering the dozen Peace Brigade ships Anakin'd had to evade on his way down to the surface of the moon, there was a definite need for immediate action. Master Solusar agreed with him, at least, and didn't give him too much of a hard time about going against his uncle's orders to be here; on the other hand, Kam didn't share Anakin's optimism that an academy full of Jedi trainees could hold out for the possible days it would take for Karrde to arrive.
And now here he was, getting tacklehugged by Tahiri and wondering why it made him feel vaguely like he had the other week in Fandom when everyone was acting so weird.
"What are you looking at?" she asked, abruptly cutting off the enthusiastic barrage of chatter she'd been throwing at him.
"I, uh." Why was he so uncomfortable around his best friend all of a sudden? "You look, um, different?"
She didn't, technically, but somehow she did; he couldn't help thinking of the contrast between her and the other, more serious Tahiri from Fandom.
"Older, maybe," she suggested, giving him a pointed look. "I'm fourteen. Last week."
Stang. He'd forgotten. "Happy birthday?" Anakin tried weakly, and he could just see both the Jaina and Tahiri from Fandom telling him I told you so.
"You should have thought of it then, but thanks anyway. Dummy." Tahiri tried to pass it off lightly, but he knew her well enough to know she was upset -- which was confirmed when she turned to Kam and demanded, "What's he doing here, anyway? I know he didn't come to see me."
Ouch. Anakin was grateful for Kam bailing him out of that one by telling her he was here to warn them about trouble, but he knew there was no way she was going to leave that alone. They used to get into trouble together all the time. Why did he worry so much about the possibility of that happening now?
***
A hurried conference with Kam, Tionne, and Anakin's old Master Ikrit (and Tahiri, who would have refused to be left out of it even if Kam hadn't let her be there) resulted in a plan of sorts: Kam and Tionne would take the Jedi students to hide in a subterranean cave down the river while Anakin stayed behind to stage a decoy escape and buy them time.
Kam had argued, at first, insisting that he should be the one to stay behind, but to everyone's surprise Master Ikrit took Anakin's side. Anakin would have felt better if Ikrit hadn't insisted on staying with him. Then again . . .
"Fine," was Tahiri's response when Kam asked her to help him and Tionne get the students onto the boats. "But I'm staying with Anakin."
"No," insisted Anakin, who suddenly understood how his grandfather felt about students in Fandom getting too involved.
"Yes! I've been stuck on this mud-ball while you've been out fighting the Yuuzhan Vong," Tahiri snapped. "I'm sick of it! I'm ready to do something!"
Tionne tried to intervene, saying, "You're too young for this."
That was exactly the wrong thing to say, because Tahiri countered, "Anakin's only two years older than me! He was fifteen at Sernpidal!"
"And I got Chewie killed." As that room in the dungeon had so helpfully reminded him.
"You don't want me with you?" He'd never heard her sound so betrayed. "After all we -- you think I'm just a kid, just like they do?"
It wasn't that, but he couldn't make himself say I just don't want to see you get killed too out loud.
***
So far, everything was going smoothly: the energy shield he'd cobbled together ought to hold long enough to give Kam, Tionne, and the kids a head start, and Master Ikrit hadn't given him too much of a lecture about how he needed to be careful with his anger. (Anakin felt he had good reason to be angry, when people, especially ones he cared about, died because he'd failed them.) So far, Master Ikrit's tactic of using the Force to trick the Peace Brigaders into thinking they were being shot at, aided by Anakin's occasional real blaster bolt, was working.
Until blaster bolts started flying from somewhere behind him, and he swore in surprise.
"Didn't you notice?" asked Ikrit, imperturbably. "Didn't you know she would come?"
"Notice --" He should have known. Tahiri, of course, and two other young Jedi presences he could sense -- and there went his plan to get away in his X-Wing.
It was even worse when he found them -- Tahiri, Sannah, and Valin Horn (Corran was going to kill him), especially when his attempt to lecture them for doing something so stupidly reckless backfired.
"You're the one who came back here from Fandom without waiting for permission, aren't you?" Tahiri asked him, sharply. "You get to do everything while we just run away and do nothing? I don't think so, best friend."
"Yeah? Well, my plan was to get away in the X-Wing. Now we have too many people for that. What does the brilliant Tahiri propose we do, exactly?" He winced as soon as he realized how angry he sounded.
She hadn't thought that far, but to be fair he hadn't either, because he hadn't planned for this. Fine, so they'd take a Peace Brigade ship, but he still had to figure out how to get Tahiri and the others safely to the rendezvous point with Master Ikrit. They managed to get Sannah and Valin onto a turbolift, but not before a half dozen Peace Brigaders caught up to them. Those weren't bad odds when he had his lightsaber, except he was a half step too slow and sensed the incoming blow of a force pike that he wouldn't be able to avoid --
And didn't have to, when a bright blue (the same color as his eyes, though he didn't realize that) lightsaber blade sliced it in half. Since when had Tahiri gotten far enough along to build her own lightsaber? Probably when he wasn't paying attention. Not that he had time to think much about that -- he could hear reinforcements coming, and he couldn't take them all on and watch Tahiri's back at the same time.
A hard Force shove knocked them all down just long enough for him to slice open a hole in the wall beside the turbolift shaft, turn to Tahiri, and say, "You say you're ready for this? Jump."
She did, with a complete lack of hesitation that showed her absolute trust in him, and Anakin leaped down into the darkness right after her.
[OOC: NFI/NFB, OOC okay, TBC, alphabet soup. Dialogue from Edge of Victory 1: Conquest by Greg Keyes.]
On the way, he'd put in a call to Jacen and Jaina, hoping to get a sense of what kind of atmosphere he'd be heading into, and that hadn't gone well. For one, the conversation (as most of the ones he had with his brother did) devolved into a shouting match that only ended because Jaina yelled at both of them. Beyond that, he was exactly the opposite of gratified to find out that his initial guess had been more or less on target: the Peace Brigade definitely seemed to have its sights set on the Jedi academy, since the prospect of rounding up a whole lot of Jedi with minimal effort to turn them over to the Yuuzhan Vong was an appealing one.
So they'd pulled Uncle Luke into the call, only to find out that while he suspected the same thing they did and had requested backup from the New Republic, the military wasn't in a hurry to send it and despite his own concerns and the fact that he'd been trying to make arrangements with Talon Karrde to arrange for an evacuation, Luke himself didn't feel it was urgent enough to warrant immediate action.
Well, considering the dozen Peace Brigade ships Anakin'd had to evade on his way down to the surface of the moon, there was a definite need for immediate action. Master Solusar agreed with him, at least, and didn't give him too much of a hard time about going against his uncle's orders to be here; on the other hand, Kam didn't share Anakin's optimism that an academy full of Jedi trainees could hold out for the possible days it would take for Karrde to arrive.
And now here he was, getting tacklehugged by Tahiri and wondering why it made him feel vaguely like he had the other week in Fandom when everyone was acting so weird.
"What are you looking at?" she asked, abruptly cutting off the enthusiastic barrage of chatter she'd been throwing at him.
"I, uh." Why was he so uncomfortable around his best friend all of a sudden? "You look, um, different?"
She didn't, technically, but somehow she did; he couldn't help thinking of the contrast between her and the other, more serious Tahiri from Fandom.
"Older, maybe," she suggested, giving him a pointed look. "I'm fourteen. Last week."
Stang. He'd forgotten. "Happy birthday?" Anakin tried weakly, and he could just see both the Jaina and Tahiri from Fandom telling him I told you so.
"You should have thought of it then, but thanks anyway. Dummy." Tahiri tried to pass it off lightly, but he knew her well enough to know she was upset -- which was confirmed when she turned to Kam and demanded, "What's he doing here, anyway? I know he didn't come to see me."
Ouch. Anakin was grateful for Kam bailing him out of that one by telling her he was here to warn them about trouble, but he knew there was no way she was going to leave that alone. They used to get into trouble together all the time. Why did he worry so much about the possibility of that happening now?
***
A hurried conference with Kam, Tionne, and Anakin's old Master Ikrit (and Tahiri, who would have refused to be left out of it even if Kam hadn't let her be there) resulted in a plan of sorts: Kam and Tionne would take the Jedi students to hide in a subterranean cave down the river while Anakin stayed behind to stage a decoy escape and buy them time.
Kam had argued, at first, insisting that he should be the one to stay behind, but to everyone's surprise Master Ikrit took Anakin's side. Anakin would have felt better if Ikrit hadn't insisted on staying with him. Then again . . .
"Fine," was Tahiri's response when Kam asked her to help him and Tionne get the students onto the boats. "But I'm staying with Anakin."
"No," insisted Anakin, who suddenly understood how his grandfather felt about students in Fandom getting too involved.
"Yes! I've been stuck on this mud-ball while you've been out fighting the Yuuzhan Vong," Tahiri snapped. "I'm sick of it! I'm ready to do something!"
Tionne tried to intervene, saying, "You're too young for this."
That was exactly the wrong thing to say, because Tahiri countered, "Anakin's only two years older than me! He was fifteen at Sernpidal!"
"And I got Chewie killed." As that room in the dungeon had so helpfully reminded him.
"You don't want me with you?" He'd never heard her sound so betrayed. "After all we -- you think I'm just a kid, just like they do?"
It wasn't that, but he couldn't make himself say I just don't want to see you get killed too out loud.
***
So far, everything was going smoothly: the energy shield he'd cobbled together ought to hold long enough to give Kam, Tionne, and the kids a head start, and Master Ikrit hadn't given him too much of a lecture about how he needed to be careful with his anger. (Anakin felt he had good reason to be angry, when people, especially ones he cared about, died because he'd failed them.) So far, Master Ikrit's tactic of using the Force to trick the Peace Brigaders into thinking they were being shot at, aided by Anakin's occasional real blaster bolt, was working.
Until blaster bolts started flying from somewhere behind him, and he swore in surprise.
"Didn't you notice?" asked Ikrit, imperturbably. "Didn't you know she would come?"
"Notice --" He should have known. Tahiri, of course, and two other young Jedi presences he could sense -- and there went his plan to get away in his X-Wing.
It was even worse when he found them -- Tahiri, Sannah, and Valin Horn (Corran was going to kill him), especially when his attempt to lecture them for doing something so stupidly reckless backfired.
"You're the one who came back here from Fandom without waiting for permission, aren't you?" Tahiri asked him, sharply. "You get to do everything while we just run away and do nothing? I don't think so, best friend."
"Yeah? Well, my plan was to get away in the X-Wing. Now we have too many people for that. What does the brilliant Tahiri propose we do, exactly?" He winced as soon as he realized how angry he sounded.
She hadn't thought that far, but to be fair he hadn't either, because he hadn't planned for this. Fine, so they'd take a Peace Brigade ship, but he still had to figure out how to get Tahiri and the others safely to the rendezvous point with Master Ikrit. They managed to get Sannah and Valin onto a turbolift, but not before a half dozen Peace Brigaders caught up to them. Those weren't bad odds when he had his lightsaber, except he was a half step too slow and sensed the incoming blow of a force pike that he wouldn't be able to avoid --
And didn't have to, when a bright blue (the same color as his eyes, though he didn't realize that) lightsaber blade sliced it in half. Since when had Tahiri gotten far enough along to build her own lightsaber? Probably when he wasn't paying attention. Not that he had time to think much about that -- he could hear reinforcements coming, and he couldn't take them all on and watch Tahiri's back at the same time.
A hard Force shove knocked them all down just long enough for him to slice open a hole in the wall beside the turbolift shaft, turn to Tahiri, and say, "You say you're ready for this? Jump."
She did, with a complete lack of hesitation that showed her absolute trust in him, and Anakin leaped down into the darkness right after her.
[OOC: NFI/NFB, OOC okay, TBC, alphabet soup. Dialogue from Edge of Victory 1: Conquest by Greg Keyes.]
